it's 2021 why can't we fulfil refunded or cancelled orders

[darrenmillar]

I'm finding it increasingly frustrating that if I cancel or refund an item on and order where the other items are fulfilled that it's IMPOSSIBLE to mark the order fulfilled?

Removed and refunded items remain unfulfilled.

Why is this still a thing?

Sigh.

[Shay]

Hi @darrenmillar 

Thank you for sharing your feedback about the fulfillment process in the admin for canceled or refunded items. I'd also be happy to share some clarification on why these items stay as unfulfilled once they are canceled or refunded. 

To ensure accurate "book-keeping", the actions you take in the admin for certain orders could be limited based on previous interactions with that order. A canceled order means that the order no longer exists, the money has been refunded to customer or never received at all, and the items will not be leaving your store inventory. Since the order is canceled, there is technically no items that should be marked as fulfilled as there is no order to fulfill them through any longer. 

For refunded items, the same thing goes. A fulfilled item is where the item has been removed from your inventory, packaged and delivered/shipped to the customer. If that has not happened, then marking the items as fulfilled would be incorrect and create false tracking. The system also sends automated messages when an order or item is marked as fulfilled, telling the customer it has been shipped out to them and they can expect it soon.

I can understand that esthetically it looks nice to have a list of orders marked as fulfilled in your store admin as an unfulfilled order can look like something may have been missed. In actuality though this is the correct status for the order unless you are still planning on sending the product out even if it was refunded/canceled. 

If I misunderstood what you were referring to, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Thank you!

-Shay

[darrenmillar]

Since the order is canceled, there is technically no items that should be marked as fulfilled as there is no order to fulfill them through any longer. 

If this is in fact the case i'd suggest allowing the removal of the unfulfilled tag (after all there are also no items that should be marked as unfulfilled). It's a messy and lazy omission. And offers nothing to "book keeping" accurate or not.

If order cancelled/refunded before shipping - Remove items and also remove "unfulfilled" tag for items. Close and archive order.

If order partially shipped with some items cancelled/refunded - Remove items and also remove "unfulfilled" tag for items. Archive order.

In actuality though this is the correct status for the order unless you are still planning on sending the product out even if it was refunded/canceled. 

"Unfulfilled" can't be considered the correct status of an order that has been cancelled or refunded before shipping. because at that stage there is no payment, therefore no shipping intent. 

Even if the "unfulfilled" tag has to remain the affected orders should at least be closed.

For example I currently have 27 unfulfilled orders.. My dashboard tells me there are 33... 6 orders are cancelled but remain "open"

Aesthetics are secondary here, it should be easier to hide/remove cancelled or refunded orders.

D

[Shay]

Thank you for following up on this @darrenmillar! 

I appreciate your additional feedback about the unfulfilled tag and how you would like these orders to be managed within the admin. I want to let you know that I have provided this feedback to our developers on your behalf for consideration! We are always trying to improve our platform, and feedback from merchants like yourself is always appreciated. 

Right now, every order in your orders list must have a fulfillment status, and there is not an option for a blank/empty fulfillment status for the items/order. If the order is not fulfilled, because it is a cancelled order, for inventory management and tracking purposes it would be considered unfulfilled. 

You noted that you have "open" orders in your admin that you weren't able to remove and I wanted to see if I can help with that. When I review the orders in my own test store, this is what I see:

Order numbers that are greyed out (#1060, #1060) are archived orders and once archived they do not count to the noted unfulfilled orders in the tab highlighted in my screenshot (Unfulfilled - 21). Even if an order has an unfulfilled, or partially fulfilled, status the order can be archived and the metrics for that are removed from the open orders. 

Are you able to share a screenshot (hiding sensitive details) of where you are seeing open unfulfilled orders that you would like to close out? I'd be happy to troubleshoot that with you.

-Shay

[LGstore]

This is the part of the dashboard OP is referring to. I do NOT have 872 open orders, but all of my 'unfulfilled' orders are showing in this number, even though my number is less than half that amount. There has to be a way to remove the 'unfulfilled + cancelled/refunded' orders to the closed tab, and removing them from the overall count in "ALL" orders column. 

Also, my top headers do not show a count bubble next to them like yours does. Please adviwse how this can be corrected! It's been like this for over 4 years for me and I've just dealt with looking at 800+ orders at any given time when that is NOT the case. 

[Shay]

Hi @LGstore 

Thank you for the screenshots and the description of what you have been experiencing. The alert for 800+ orders can definitely be distracting and I can understand wanting to get that taken care of. 

For the 800+ orders that are showing as open and unfulfilled, are any of the orders in a "closed" or "archived" state? You can review the orders to see the status of them and also check in the order timeline to see if it was ever archived. 

In your admin, under Settings > Checkout and Account, if you scroll down to Order Processing you will see this option in my screenshot below "Automatically archive the order" when it has been fulfilled or refunded. Do you have this option enabled or disabled at this time? If it is disabled then your previous orders were not automatically archived and you will want to select all completed orders and mark them as closed/archived yourself.

If you need help selecting all but your most recent orders to make that change, please reach out to our live support team for some assistance in troubleshooting. Also, if the orders are archived/closed but still showing in your open order count, I would ask that you also please connect with our live team so that this can be escalated to our technical support for a review. 

You also asked about the number next to the tabs in the order list, that visual feature is no longer a part of the admin so you won't see it anymore. 

[TheBoatGalley]

Archiving an order does NOT remove it from the list of orders to be fulfilled. See my longer reply with screenshots. This is NOT the answer.

[AndromedaEyes]

Has this been resolved yet? I'm facing the same issue and it's so annoying.

[Fay_Rochelle]

From what @Shay explained I have managed to get this to work for me.

I had 700+ orders showing, even though the majority of these were refunded or cancelled.

What I did was select Open, then manually go through and check off any cancelled or refunded orders still showing as unfulfilled. Then click on the tab with 3 dots ... Then select Archive Orders. This then removed any unfulfilled/cancelled/refunded orders from open orders. You should also see this reflected in the number that is shown next to orders. You may need to refresh the page to see it go down. I did a page a time but eventually got it down to the correct number of orders I should have had open. Then if you follow Shay's directions above regarding "Automatically archive the order" this should keep those numbers accurate in the future. Or you can just manually archive any cancelled/refunded orders yourself as and when if you'd  prefer. Hope that helps!

[violetsshop]

Hi Shay and other Shopify staff! It's almost 2024 and this is still an issue. Can you let your product team know that we would like to prioritize old issues that still exist from years ago instead of putting out features no one cares about? So many issues with the platform... this is getting ridiculous... seeing unsolved issues from YEARS ago every time I search for problems. HELP!

[Shay]

Hi @violetsshop 

Thank you for joining the conversation and for sharing your feedback on this topic as well. I would like to know more about what you are seeing in your admin that you are considering an issue.

The fact that cancelled or refunded orders continue to show as unfulfilled is an expected behavior of the order details and not considered a platform bug or issue on our end. I shared some additional information about that in my earlier comments. That being said, we are happy to hear our merchant feedback about this experience so we can look at improving the over-all workflow in the admin.

[violetsshop]

Hi @Shay 

Even though this isn't a "bug", it was just poorly designed and didn't consider how Shopify stores fulfill orders. My phone shows this as being unfulfilled on the app notifications, it shows it right away on my computer, I have to communicate to my staff that this is to be ignored... it's just very frustrating to see it sitting as an unfulfilled notification. As everyone has mentioned, it continues to show up, and toggling the tabs to get new tags on the desktop makes it disappear temporarily, but not from the overall unfulfilled order history, which is the default that shows up. Essentially, even though this order is closed out and dealt with, it will always show up in our notifications and outstanding fulfillments. Honestly, will it show up until the end of time...? Some users say their notifications have 800 unfilled tags but they don't have anywhere close to that needing to be fulfilled.

Basically in my case, this order was refunded, all items were restocked at our store by the app, and it was cancelled as requested by the customer. The customer received an email, everything is closed as far as we are all concerned. No need for book keeping to understand, as is zeros off and it's a non-issue. There is no longer a reason to fulfill the order, so the cancelled tag (especially when a full order is cancelled) should override the unfulfilled tag since other tags already exist. 

As previous customers mentioned, it's also causing issues on their end that could easily be simplified if the cancelled tag overrode the unfulfilled tag. This shouldn't remain as unfulfilled forever, and there should be no need to toggle between tabs to not see it temporarily. Please help us just get rid of this tag and archive it so that it doesn't show up as unfulfilled.

Unfulfilled implies to all of us that there is a requirement to do something still on our end, and this is just not the case.

Thanks for your reply today!

[begonegoods]

Hey @violetsshop I have developed a workaround for you and others interested in 'fulfilling' orders that have been refunded or cancelled.

From the orders page, click into the order that needs to be fulfilled. Then at top right, click on the 'Edit' button. Then in the 'Add Product' section, click on 'Add custom item' in the top right. Add in a custom item called 'Order refunded' or something of that nature, give it a $0 value, and uncheck taxable and item is physical. Then click on the 'Add item' button in the bottom right to confirm. Now your order has a phantom item you can 'fulfill' to get that annoying sticker off the order page. Simply return to the orders page, click on the checkbox to select the order, and mark it as fulfilled. Be sure to check 'do not notify customer' if prompted.

Once you go through this process, the yellow 'unfulfilled' box will disappear and the only thing you'll likely notice now is that the order is still in bold. To get rid of the bold, simply archive the order. To do this from the orders page, click the check box next to the order, then click on the three little dots on the popup ("More actions"), and then click "Archive Orders".

You may still notice that in your lefthand side navbar, the "Orders" tab will still erroneously show that there's an order still open. However, all you have to do is log out and log back in. That's enough for the system to properly recalibrate your actual open order count.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

[violetsshop]

Hi @begonegoods thanks for the reply and workaround! I think this will work if the order hasn't been cancelled already, as now I'm not able to edit any orders that I was playing around with to try and make them disappear. I'll do this in the future before selecting cancel, as it looks like things still somewhat work (editing, etc.) when it's just "refunded". 

All users beware of hitting that cancel order button, haha. 

@Shopify this is an easy fix! Please make some of these changes for users so that we aren't all developing our own workarounds. We know our inventory and refunds better than you! We [are trying to] use your product every day! Listen to us. 

[LaurenMenorca]

Our 3PL reads the refunded unfulfilled orders and resends out the items when they come back into stock. Its a massive issue. The order needs to be able to have the unfulfilled tag removed regardless if you 'fulfill it' in the way Shopify terms it. Maybe when the Refunded button is clicked it automatically cancels the unfulfilled button. I'm losing money to customers who now have both the refund and the item. Nightmare. 

[createbrandland]

I get than but in my orders status it always says I have an order and this is very frustrating how can I sort it so it is not still showing as an Order in my Shopify front page.

Jan Warwick

[TheBoatGalley]

I have the same problem. Cancelled orders are showing up in the total that need to be filled, and are showing as unfulfilled in the list. My warehouse thinks they need to be filled. There has to be a way to get them out of the list. And yes, they have been archived. See the following.

[36bananapies]

It's because Shopify is awful and they don't care about improving the customer experience. They sure do care about robbing their customers by holding income and doing payouts, but not refunding their "processing fees" when an order is canceled.

I can't wait to be done with Shopify after several thousand orders, no help from friendly fraud, money sapped from canceled orders, and my favorite, the CANCELED AND ARCHIVED unfulfilled orders stacking up over the years making it difficult for me or my staff to see what needs to go out.

I'm in the process of closing down my shop and archiving everything and I thought that maybe there was a solution to this after all these years, but nope. 

If you do 50k in sales a year run far far away!

[bjam55]

Hi! May I ask which platform you are planning to use instead? I'm having this same issue and many others and we do between 100k and 200k per year. 

[PixelsPhotoArt]

2024 and this issue has not been fixed by Shopify. Soon going into 2025. It's a nightmare for people with OCD. Basically, you have to fulfill the order before refunding. That's how you get rid of those. If you don't they will always appear, because their developers are too busy reinventing the wheel rather than fix existing issues.